Robert Ames — A Coming Star (1925) 🇺🇸

Without even a test for photographic qualities and knowing absolutely nothing of movies, Robert Ames was signed by Cecil De Mille on a five-year contract. It is not De Mille’s customary policy to take such chances, but perhaps his trained eye saw in Ames undoubted picture possibilities.

Ames came West to star in Kelly’s Vacation and was seen by De Mille [Cecil B. DeMille], and tendered the contract.

“I had no thought of going into pictures,” he said. “My life had been wrapped up in the theater. I don’t suppose I’ve seen more than twenty-five movies. To be frank, the money interested me, but now that I’m getting familiar with the work it strikes me that there is a lot more to this so-called new art than I thought before.”

Ames has a jovial Irish face and might pass for Tom Moore. He started in stock while still in school. He played in The Squaw Man and other old favorites and, season after season, was seen in The Great Divide, Come Out of the Kitchen, and other Henry Miller plays. Later he was Ethel Barrymore’s leading man in Déclassé, Francine Larrimore’s in Nice People, a rôle in which he was followed by Rod La Rocque, and was with Otis Skinner in Pietro.

During his road tours he became quite a popular matinée idol over the country and De Mille predicts that in a year or so he will be equally a favorite with movie audiences.

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Photo by: William Davis Pearsall

Collection: Picture Play Magazine, October 1925